Review of the use of the term "cancer"

[knavesmith]

That was a bit harsh.

He brings up a valid point, though. In a general sense, why should we have to change our behavior just because some random stranger on the Internet cannot control their feelings?

[Zapperzz]

My mom almost died of ovarian cancer.  We saw 3 doctors before one agreed to actually treat her (the rest said she would die :/).  We decided to see an out-of-state doctor, who immediately agreed to treat her.  Years later she is cancer-free and doing fine!

 

Now I think I have been through similar experiences as people who don't like the use of the word cancer on TF2, I myself do not mind it at all.  They don't say the word purposely wanting to inflict harm on people or remind them of traumatic experiences... It is just basic TF2 economy vocabulary, the word is used only to describe bad hats and bad effects.  I don't know how it came to mean that, but it does and I don't view that as a bad thing.  

 

If you do care I can empathize with you and see where you're coming from, but nothing you do will stop it from being used so the best thing you could do is try to ignore it.  I'm pretty sure you can get chrome mods that change certain words on web pages to other words, so maybe you could change "cancer" to "bad" as it is normally used before the word "hat" or "effect" 

[Randy The Shpee Of Nigeria]

I'm gonna be honest here, maybe a bit insensitive but people really do take words a bit too personally. Idk maybe just being called derogatory or distasteful things a lot it just doesn't phase me at this point

[sealed interface]

While I've never seen anybody take offense to the word "cancer" before, I can see why it may be offensive to some people. To me, the word "cancer" really only is fitting for the actual disease, and the metaphorical sense where a phenomenon actually is destructive and spreads ("like cancer"). The usage of the term for cheap, unwanted unusuals isn't really destructive or rapidly spreading, so the term "cancer unusuals" always seemed like a misuse of the word. I take offense to racial slurs, homophobic slurs, and derogatory use of "autism" and it's related words, but I guess I haven't heard "cancer" used outside of its normal intended meaning enough to see it as offensive, and I think a lot of the TF2 community haven't heard it misused enough to know it could be offensive.

 

Up until this thread, I had thought that the term "cancer unusuals" was a standard acceptable trading term, like "overpay" or "clean" / "dirty". After reading this, I will no longer call these unwanted/cheap unusuals "cancer", instead saying "cheap unusuals". Your post is not in vain; it certainly cleared things up for me.